Tina Charles Wins Naismith Award

When she finally takes the time to dwell on the accomplishments of her college career, Tina Charles will be able to measure it by the series of awards and trophies she won as a senior.

"I don't think I'll be able to enjoy everything until I'm happy and guaranteed that we're going to win the national championship," Charles said Monday.

UConn's senior center won the 2010 Naismith Trophy Monday as the top player in women's basketball. Maya Moore won it last season.

Charles was selected over Moore, Stanford's Jayne Appel and Nebraska's Kelsey Griffin in voting by journalists coaches, administrators and fans.

Charles is also the Big East, USBWA and Associated Press player of the year.

She is the fourth UConn player to win the Naismith Trophy, joining Sue Bird (2002), Diana Taurasi (2003, 2004) and Moore (2009).

No Strangers Many of the UConn and Stanford players have been teammates and competitors for years on AAU and U.S. national teams.

"We all put aside our college differences for a little while when we're playing together," Moore said. "And you're just competing. You're not thinking about the college season, necessarily. We're always competitive and stuff like that. But I don't think we hold back."

San Antonio Forever? UConn coach Geno Auriemma has been to 11 Final Fours. Here are his favorite sites:

"Minneapolis. Philadelphia. San Antonio. St. Louis. New Orleans. Atlanta," he said. "Philadelphia was my finest, because it was home. All my friends, my family, everybody was there. That was 1. San Antonio is 1-A. This is a great town. I wish they could have it here every year. I really do. I think the fans have the best experience here. I think the teams have the best experience here.

"The people here do a phenomenal job of hosting the event. I don't think anybody in the coaching community or in the same community would be disappointed if [the Alamodome] had the Final Four every single year. I just wish our hotel bar would stay open later."

Show Me The Money Auriemma was told the NBA's New Jersey Nets want Duke's Mike Krzyzewski to be their coach and were considering making an offer of between $12 million and $15 million a year.

"Is that a year or total?," Auriemma asked. "A year? That opens up the Duke job, huh?"

When told he should consider interviewing for the Boston College men's job, he laughed. "Yeah, yeah. Sure," he said. "We win 30 games every year and I'm going to go someplace where I'm going to get killed.

"Now, unless Mike [Krzyzewski] called me and said he would give me $2 million a year to be his assistant with the Nets, that's the greatest job in the history of sports, being an assistant NBA coach. I may have the best job in all of sports. But I'll tell you what, it's got to be pretty hard to find a better job than an assistant in the NBA to a great guy."

Tara In Cosmo Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer doesn't read Cosmopolitan. She wasn't even sure what the magazine was all about until she heard her players screaming when they found a Valentine's Day article in the magazine with her comments in it.

Let VanDerveer explain: "My cousin's daughter works there. They said, 'Well, we're doing an article for Valentine's Day and what basketball stuff can you do?' I said, 'I don't know, 2-on-2? H-O-R-S-E?' I gave them this little thing. Then they made their own stuff up. So all of a sudden, we're on the bus and the [players] are screaming in the back of the bus — 'Look, you're in here.' They got a big kick out of it."

Senior guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude especially got a kick out of it, since she was the one who told the story in the press conference Monday.

Asked to elaborate later, Gold-Onwude said: "She's a woman of tradition. She has two hairstyles — A, where her hair is just down; and B, where she pushes it behind her ears.

"We have the [Cosmo] magazine somewhere. It's absolutely hilarious that Tara's in any of these magazines."

Ratings Winner The Baylor-UConn semifinal on ESPN received a 2.6 national rating, up 37 percent over last year's game against Stanford. It was the best overnight rating in two years for ESPN's coverage of the women's tournament. The Hartford market generated a 17.1 rating, below last year's UConn-Stanford semifinal (20.0).